Breaking Point | Page 6

on the rim of the wheel, settled his big shoulders, and hauled. With a sharp crack the wheel broke off in his hands.
Johnny staggered, then stood. He looked at the wheel and then up at the broken end of its shaft, gleaming deep below the surface of the bulkhead.
"Oh, fine...." Ives whispered.
Suddenly Johnny threw back his head and loosened a burst of high, hysterical laughter. It echoed back and forth between the metal walls like a torrent from a burst dam. It went on and on, as if now that the dam was gone, the flood would run forever.
Anderson called out "Johnny!" three times, but the note of command had no effect. Paresi walked to the pilot and with the immemorial practice slapped him sharply across the cheeks. "Johnny! Stop it!"
The laughter broke off as suddenly as it had begun. Johnny's chest heaved, drawing in breath with great, rasping near-sobs. Slowly they died away. He extended the wheel toward the Captain.
"It broke off," he said, finally, dully, without emphasis.
Then he leaned back against the hull, slowly slid down until he was sitting on the deck. "Broke right off," he said.
Ives twined his fat fingers together and bent them until the knuckles cracked. "Now what?"
"I suggest," said Paresi, in an extremely controlled tone, "that we all sit down and think over the whole thing very carefully."
Hoskins had been staring hypnotically at the broken shaft deep in the wall. "I wonder," he said at length, "which way Johnny turned that wheel."
"Counter-clockwise," said Ives. "You saw him."
"I know that," said Hoskins. "I mean, which way: the right way, or the wrong way?"
"Oh." There was a short silence. Then Ives said, "I guess we'll never know, now."
"Not until we get back to Earth," said Paresi quickly.
"You say 'until', or 'unless'?" Ives demanded.
"I said 'until', Ives," said Paresi levelly, "and watch your mouth."
"Sometimes," said the fat man with a dangerous joviality, "you pick the wrong way to say the right thing, Nick." Then he clapped the slender doctor on the back. "But I'll be good. We sow no panic seed, do we?"
"Much better not to," said the Captain. "It's being done efficiently enough from outside."
"You are convinced it's being done from outside?" asked Hoskins, peering at him owlishly.
"I'm ... convinced of very little," said the Captain heavily. He went to the acceleration couch and sat down. "I want out," he said. He waved away the professional comment he could see forming on Paresi's lips and went on, "Not claustrophobia, Nick. Getting out of the ship's more important than just relieving our feelings. If the trouble with the port is being caused by some fantastic something outside this ship, we'll achieve a powerful victory over it, purely by ignoring it."
"It broke off," murmured Johnny.
"Ignore that," snorted Ives.
"You keep talking about this thing being caused by something outside," said Paresi. His tone was almost complaining.
"Got a better hypothesis?" asked Hoskins.
"Hoskins," said the Captain, "isn't there some way we can get out? What about the tubes?"
"Take a shipyard to move those power-plants," said Hoskins, "and even if it could be done, those radioactive tubes would fry you before you crawled a third of the way."
"We should have a lifeboat," said Ives to no one in particular.
"What in time does a ship like the Ambassador need with a lifeboat?" asked Hoskins in genuine amazement.
The Captain frowned. "What about the ventilators?"
"Take us days to remove all the screens and purifiers," said Hoskins, "and then we'd be up against the intake ports. You could stroll out through any of them about as far as your forearm. And after that it's hull-metal, skipper. That you don't cut, not with a piece of the Sun's core."
The Captain got up and began pacing, slowly and steadily, as if the problem could be trodden out like ripe grapes. He closed his eyes and said, "I've been circling around that idea for thirty minutes now. Look: the hull can't be cut because it is built so it can't fail. It doesn't fail. The port controls were also built so they wouldn't fail. They do fail. The thing that keeps us in stays in shape. The thing that lets us out goes bad. Effect: we stay inside. Cause: something that wants us to stay inside."
"Oh," said Johnny clearly.
They looked at him. He raised his head, stiffened his spine against the bulkhead. Paresi smiled at him. "Sure, Johnny. The machine didn't fail. It was--controlled. It's all right." Then he turned to the Captain and said carefully, "I'm not denying what you say, Skipper. But I don't like to think of what will happen if you take that tack, reason it through, and don't get any answers."
"I'd hate to be a psychologist," said Ives fervently. "Do you extrapolate your mastications, too, and get frightened of the stink you might